Danielle, New Year's Eve is special for me. Each and every year on New Year's Eve Bruce and I watch Casablanca: a story about love, loyalty, and courage. About how people resist dark forces and survive — even against all odds. About hope — for young people on the threshold of building a new life, and old people looking for a safe landing place — praying and fighting for a brighter dawn for each other. It was with this spirit six years ago today that I officially announced an exploratory committee to run for president, with the idea that working people — not corporations, not bank executives, not far-right ideologies, not billionaires — should hold political and economic power in our country. And five years ago today in 2019 as a candidate for president, I spoke at the historic Old South Meeting House in Boston about what's possible when we dream beyond the corruption we see and imagine a new future together. I'd like to share a bit of that speech with you tonight:
So as we turn the page tomorrow — into an election year and a new decade — there is a chill of fear in the air. People are afraid. Afraid for their families and neighbors. Afraid for the children locked in our detention centers and the children on lockdown in our schools. Afraid for women, LGBTQ+ people, especially trans people whose rights will be decided in the Supreme Court next year. Afraid for our country. Afraid for our planet. And the danger they feel is real. Our democracy hangs in the balance. And now it comes to us — now it comes to us to fight back. We are a nation that fights back. Fighting back is an act of patriotism. We fought back against a king and an empire to form a new republic. We fought back against the scourge of slavery even after it was written into our constitution. We fought back against worldwide economic depressions. We fought back against fascist tyrants. Those moments in American history define us. And at each one of them, if our leaders had approached the moment thinking small, we would not have made it through. Americans do big things. That's who we are. And our best moments as a country have been when we see a challenge clearly and we mobilize to meet it head on. And that is why I come to you on this New Year's Eve with a heart filled with optimism. We became the world's leading industrial producer and simultaneously gave workers the right to join unions and the right to live decent lives. We created breakthroughs in science and technology and connected the world through the internet. We rocketed to the moon. We created some of the most beautiful and profound art and music the world has ever seen or read or heard. And these achievements, these victories — not one of them was born of fear. They were born of boldness and big dreams. They were rooted in our unique ability to turn despair into hope, fear into courage, improbability into triumph. They were born of our ability to imagine a better world, to imagine it so clearly and so thoroughly that we fought for it with everything we had — and turned things we could only imagine into reality.
I share this with you now, Danielle, because the dreams we imagine for a better world are still possible — and worth fighting for — on this New Year's Eve. Together, we can choose hope over fear, courage over timidity, and dreams over cynicism. It's going to take hard work in 2025 and beyond. But I know this team is up to the task. And I'm asking if you can chip in to help keep up the fight, and the hope. Please make a donation, if you can, to help hit our fundraising goal before tonight's last FEC deadline of the year. $3 or whatever you can contribute would go a long way to help make our movement even stronger for 2025 and beyond.  | 
